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Joseph Brean Mar 18, 2012 8:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Mar 17, 2012 6:31 PM ET

To judge by the loudest headlines and the most retweeted quips, censorship has been having a bad run in the last while, with failure heaped upon failure.

Overseas, the Arab Spring was credited as much to free-flowing social media as to the rebels who used it, and the campaign for dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made him more famous than ever. A request by the U.S. government that science journals withhold details of bird flu research because of bio-terrorism fears caused a furore that is likely to end with their publication. And in Canada, the federal human rights law against Internet hate speech is about to be repealed and/or judicially overturned as censorious overreaching that violates the Charter right to free expression.

The Internet has made us feel free, and in its glare, the censor has come to seem like a foolish, out-dated, beady-eyed accountant of ideas. Censors are like poisoners, according to Nick Cohen, author of a new book on the subject. They can be successful or famous, but not both.

Behind the news, however, censorship is alive and well in the free world, and is at its most effective when victims pretend it doesnt exist.

Alicia Canter/Observer

Nick Cohen.

Among its greatest enablers, Mr. Cohen writes in You Cant Read This Book: Censorship In An Age Of Freedom, is the phoniness rampant in an overexposed Western culture, in which rebel poseurs fight battles that have already been won.

It is easy and common, he says, to pose as a smasher of taboos, a transgressive artist, an edgy comedian, or a brave journalist speaking truth to power

Its very hard for them to admit to being afraid, even though its essential, he said in an interview on the launch of the book in Canada.

Read the original here:
Censorship is alive and dangerous, even in the West